Bait Habib Al Yousef was a particularly evocative and tightly curated section at the Biennale, with Lahore-based artist Risham Syed’s new work, Un, Pani, Sutt [Grain, Water, Truth], welcoming us into the courtyard through grain that was slowly going to mature over time. When I visited in February, the grain was still a lush young green, but by March it had matured into golden long grains. At the opening, Risham mentioned the idea of sharing grain and langar as a form of building community.
Her agricultural and sonic installation connected two performances, drawing from verses of the Mul Mantar and poetry by her father, Najm Hosain Syed. The entrance corridor embalmed us with the tender singing voice of her late mother, Samina Hasan Syed, while the second sonic work was performed by Risham’s daughter, Mohrelle Hassan, who is being trained in this classical tradition. In this way, Risham’s work drew ancestral connections of orality and memory as unbroken tethers, even within the fractured landscape of Punjab after Partition.
